Ministry of Commerce: China’s total service imports and exports in the first 10 months fell 16.1% year-on-year

　　Chinanews, December 3rd. On the afternoon of the 3rd, the Ministry of Commerce held a regular press conference.

At the meeting, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, Gao Feng, introduced that since the beginning of this year, due to the superimposed effects of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and other factors, the scale of my country's service trade has declined. It has now shown a trend of stabilization. Service exports have performed significantly better than imports, and the trade deficit has decreased. The proportion of knowledge-intensive service trade increased.

From January to October, my country's total import and export of services was 3725.78 billion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year decrease of 16.1%.

Mainly have the following characteristics:

　　First, the service trade deficit has further reduced.

From January to October, my country's service exports were 1,548.95 billion yuan, down 1.8%; and imports were 2,176.83 billion yuan, down 23.9%.

The decline in service exports was 22.1 percentage points less than imports, which led to a 51.1% decline in the service trade deficit to 627.88 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 656.94 billion yuan.

　　The second is the growth of knowledge-intensive service trade against the trend.

From January to October, my country's knowledge-intensive service imports and exports amounted to RMB 1,639.03 billion, an increase of 8.3%, accounting for 44.0% of the total service imports and exports, an increase of 9.9%.

Among them, the export of knowledge-intensive services was 860.94 billion yuan, an increase of 8.2%, accounting for 55.6% of the total service exports, an increase of 5.1 percentage points.

The areas with faster growth in exports were intellectual property royalties, insurance services, telecommunications, computers and information services, with growth rates of 27.2%, 18.4% and 14.4% respectively.

Imports of knowledge-intensive services amounted to 778.09 billion yuan, an increase of 8.4%, accounting for 35.7% of total service imports, an increase of 10.7 percentage points.

The areas with faster import growth are financial services, telecommunications, computer and information services, and insurance services, with growth rates of 35%, 23.4% and 18.6% respectively.

　　Third, the import and export of travel services dropped significantly.

The new crown pneumonia epidemic has severely affected the import and export of travel services worldwide.

From January to October, my country's import and export of travel services was 873.28 billion yuan, down 47.1%, of which exports fell by 48.5% and imports fell by 46.9%.

Excluding travel services, my country's service imports and exports increased by 2.3% from January to October, of which exports increased by 4.8%, and imports were basically the same as the same period last year.